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Data and family stories about persons or families from Little Washington,
Washington County, Pennsylvania.

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CITY BUS LINES

Washington, PA

Genealogy and family history research in Little Washington,
Washington County, Pennsylvania from 1700 to present.

Delivering Lives by a Flat-Faced Pusher

by Judith Florian

The blue
& white, flat-faced pusher chugged up the hill, the driver working the
clutch and shifting gears to make it up the long stretch. A four-way stop
broke his momentum, making him hold down the large brake pedal. A lone car
took the right-of-way, before the driver once again applied his foot to the gas
pedal again. A lurch pushed us forward. We quickly settled in again
to the steady push up the next hill towards the hospital. We would take
the old drive to the right next, which twisted immediately again left, then
straight up another short slope to the stop sign. Here we faced the
hospital, as shown in numerous pictures, but people rarely exited here.
First we had to turn to the right, and within a half-block make the turn onto
the left side street that ended at the Emergency Room Entrance.

Here is
where, towards the beginning of winter, a woman sat anxiously near the front,
the look of pain clearly in her face. Applying the brake, he came to a
stop as quickly but as gently as he could and set the emergency brake.

"You
alright?" he asked.

"Hurry! Please - hurry!" she pleaded.

"I
will - hold on!" In one leap he skipped the 3 steps, his feet hitting
the asphalt driveway in front of the E. R., and quickly disappeared
inside.

After
delivering his urgent message, he rushed back outside to her as she was
anxiously trying to pull herself up from the seat. "Help - me,"
came the words between deep breaths, as she let her body slide in one motion off
the seat to the floor. The baby was already coming! A quick look
over his shoulder confirmed that the doctors and nurses weren't.

The
full-term baby boy's cry came minutes later. Of course, that was precisely
when the doctor and nurse came rushing out. It wasn't the first time this
driver had made deliveries, nor seen a baby born (he had 2 children of his own),
but this was certainly the first baby born on his bus. It was the early
1960s. He never knew the black woman's name, and shortly after the birth,
the driver jumped back behind the wheel to continue his run.

His bus
this day was the Hospital route that covered the Hospital, back to Jefferson
Ave, to Maiden Street, out to Pancake, and turning around, simply headed back on
the same streets to the Hospital again. The second route covered from
uptown to the West End, up Goat Hill to the stop sign at Wylie Ave and Edgewood
Avenue where he took the right onto Edgewood, down the side streets to Jessop
Bar near Washington Steel (a busy steel plant), back around the lower circle,
coming back up the lower side streets again to Wylie, and then returning
to the West End and uptown once more.... Again and again, the drivers kept
the 2 Washington City buses moving on their routes, mostly on time, except when
snow and ice made driving difficult on the slick side streets and steep hills.

The
buses were distinctive with their flat fronts. Drivers called them
"flat-faced pushers." The power came from the motor mounted in
the rear, but the buses didn't seem to have much 'power' with going up the steep
hills around Washington. The motors always chugged, groaned and strained
to pull its load up 45 to 90 degree inclines. In summer, the old
windows barely let enough air in to cool the inside of the blue and white buses
of the Swanson Bus Co. And with the windows open, the sweet-foul
smelling smoke of the engine curled around the back end of the bus, almost
choking the passengers sometimes. On humid summer days or in winter,
the exhaust cloud hung low around the tire closest to the exhaust pipe, and on
breezy days it reached as far as the door on the side in the front.

Making the way through Washington's narrow streets was not always easy.
Parking on both sides of most streets narrowed the way. The drivers forced
their chunky buses to practice courtesies of the road that are fairly standard
in Washington: a vehicle ascending a hill always takes right-of-way over one
descending, either pulling close to the parked cars, or in an empty area between
parked vehicles. After the traffic light at Main Street and Highland
Avenue, the bus entered the intersection, only to immediately tip downward at
the top of the hill. A long hill, there often was oncoming traffic already
coming, making bus drivers pull close to the right immediately. Half-way
down the hill, the street bends to the left then continues down to a stop sign
at the bottom. It was similar to coming east back to town on Chestnut
Street, where the very long downward hill often made drivers stop on the
downward side of the hill - not an easy thing to do in a heavy flat-pusher -
ending at the bottom where railroad tracks crossed Chestnut, forcing the bus to
stop and slowly cross the uneven tracks. The tracks marked the valley of
this street, where after stopping for the tracks drivers had to then get back up
to speed to climb another hill up to the light at Jefferson Avenue. On
upward climbs, passengers were pushed against the backs of their seats.
But the momentum on the steep down-hills often made bus riders push their feet
against the floor or against the bracing of the seat in front of them, as though
helping the driver apply the brakes. And, along the route, even on the
hills, were scheduled stops for those leaving or boarding.

People of all kinds rode the city
buses in the 1960s - workers, shoppers, women in babushkas with paper shopping
bags, kids and teenagers in private school (like Immaculate Conception High
School) who juggled stacks of text books and notebooks in their arms. One
small group of teens waited every week morning directly in front of the stop
sign on West Wylie Avenue and the corner of Edgewood. They were the oldest
three of 'the Florian Girls' (as they were called) - Diana, Cathy
and Colleen - heading to school at I. C. on Chestnut Street. Each carried
large stacks of thick books -- biology, algebra, trig, and language texts for
Latin and Spanish. Two had brown hair and eyes; the second oldest of the
group, who had just turned 13 years old, was blonde with clear blue eyes.
The blonde was Cathy, my older sister. (While my sisters crossed Edgewood
to wait for the bus under a sprawling old oak tree, I had to turn to walk up
Edgewood and go down past Washington Steel, and on to Henderson Avenue where I
was still in St. Hilary's Grade School.) Weeks passed much the same,
except the changing of season. Each day, we'd walk out through the front
yard, and head towards Edgewood Avenue, the three oldest sisters in front, with
me some steps behind, scuffing my shoes in the cinders that had been thrown by
cars to the side of the road. They had things to talk about as teenagers
that I was not privy to hearing. At Edgewood, I'd leave their company
(secretly wishing I could join them though). Sometimes the bus would
pass me walking as we both took those back roads heading down to the back of
Washington Steel. The bus driver would tap the horn as he went past me,
and my sisters would give a wave as the bus went past. I knew the driver
would go down and around, coming back to Wylie and then on to uptown, where my
sisters would be dropped off at school.

After
making the endless runs of the two routes, the last passenger would be dropped
off at their destination. At the end of the day, each driver
returned to the company's garage on Chestnut Street to turn in their bus.
And again every morning, both drivers would arrive early to check the machines
on a walk-around, then hopped aboard to start them up. They'd idle near
the garage until the motors warmed up, ready to make another day's run through
the city streets. If you don't remember, the garage was half-way down the
block between Chestnut Street and College Street, after crossing Main. The
garage was on the right. Its building was torn down and this where the
City built its first above-ground parking garage beside a medium-sized
street-level parking lot. Before a dozen years of employment passed for
the seasoned driver, Swanson was out of business.

Shiny
yellow school buses of the G. G & C. Bus Co. took over in the late 70s after
Swanson's closed, running the same two routes around the city perimeter.
Later, two additional routes were added to accommodate passenger's needs.
But, other than the different buses, nothing was much different on the routes
the buses ran. By then, I had started high school. But instead of
the bus, I often just walked from Wylie Avenue to I. C., going straight up
Jefferson Avenue to Chestnut Street.

Only years later did I hear Cathy
talk of her daily bus trips to school, and of her growing fondness for the bus
driver who ran that route every day. Over the next 4 years of high school,
and while she worked at Citizens Library, they got to know each other through
talking twice a day on the way to and from school. After her graduation
from high school, they parted company, their lives taking them in separate
directions until chance brought them together again. When they re-met,
they both already had children and were separated from their spouses. That
was the beginning of their courtship. They dated and eventually they
married. My sister and brother-in-law Bud had known each other over
30 years when she died in 2003. From the time they started dating and
through their marriage, they were inseparable, except during Bud's runs as a
long-haul truck driver. They always teased each other about the way they
met on the city bus, and ended up marrying.

The G. G & C. Bus Co. is still
in operation, now running the flat and boxy automatic-driven city buses.
The G. G. & C. Bus route
map is posted online.